Originally Posted by Rick Hirst

Fascinating discussion and all, but I'm a lot less interested in abstract discussions on what might have been or could have been, and more interested in what's about to happen.

Found this interesting tidbit at the end of a newsletter that lands weekly in my inbox:

Originally Posted by John Mauldin

I am reading a new book by Ray Kurzweil this trip. He was kind enough to send me a pre-pub copy. I will review it in September when it comes out. Entitled "The Singularity is Near," it describes the coming rapid pace of technological change and how it will affect society. IBM will have a computer in two years which can process as much as 1/10 the human brain, and sometime next decade will have one which has the power of a human brain. Kurzweil (whose credentials as an inventor have few equals) suggests we will see such a computer on our desks (less than $1,000) within 20-25 years. He discusses other changes in bio- and nano-tech.

I guess it's time for me to head back over to kurzweilai.net and see what he's up to.

I read about him in Joel Garreau's Radical Evolution. Though Garreau definitely came with a bias, I tend to agree with him that Kurzweil is (more than) a bit Pollyannaish.

Originally Posted by Peter Gibbons

Originally Posted by Rick Hirst

Fascinating discussion and all, but I'm a lot less interested in abstract discussions on what might have been or could have been, and more interested in what's about to happen.

Found this interesting tidbit at the end of a newsletter that lands weekly in my inbox:

Originally Posted by John Mauldin

I am reading a new book by Ray Kurzweil this trip. He was kind enough to send me a pre-pub copy. I will review it in September when it comes out. Entitled "The Singularity is Near," it describes the coming rapid pace of technological change and how it will affect society. IBM will have a computer in two years which can process as much as 1/10 the human brain, and sometime next decade will have one which has the power of a human brain. Kurzweil (whose credentials as an inventor have few equals) suggests we will see such a computer on our desks (less than $1,000) within 20-25 years. He discusses other changes in bio- and nano-tech.

I guess it's time for me to head back over to kurzweilai.net and see what he's up to.

I read about him in Joel Garreau's Radical Evolution. Though Garreau definitely came with a bias, I tend to agree with him that Kurzweil is (more than) a bit Pollyannaish.

Oh, I definitely agree that Kurzweil is a crackpot, like most of the (self-proclaimed) digerati. What I found to be more interesting is that he seems to have sold John Mauldin, a hard-nosed investment-banker type, on his notion that the Singularity is just around the corner. Now, Mauldin is a bit Pollyannaish himself -- he calls the 00's the "Muddle-Through Decade" and predicts that we'll get through it with "only two" relatively shallow recessions -- but still, his fairly uncritical acceptance of Kurzweil's radical assertion is rather surprising.

Why should we care what Mauldin thinks? Because when the impending Singularity gets mentioned so matter-of-factly, in an investment newsletter of all places, then it's well on its way toward becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy ... as the "dumb" money, i.e. the momentum chasers, starts piling on to everything Singularity-related. (That's why I said I'd better see what Kurzweil is up to now.)

I bet I can make a mint hawking Singularity t-shirts (pun intended). Anyone have some good Singularity slogans?

Originally Posted by Rick Hirst

I bet I can make a mint hawking Singularity t-shirts (pun intended). Anyone have some good Singularity slogans?

The Event Is Just On The Horizon
Singularity: It's Not Just For Black Holes Anymore
Zero Denominator NOW!
My Numerator Is "Singularly" Huge, Wanna See It? :wink:

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68

The large majority of stars are spectral-class M 'red dwarf' suns. They are much smaller and less masive than the Sun, and cooler, emitting less energy. An 'Earth-like (broadly defined)' world would have to orbit much closer to a red dwarf than to the Sun to stay at a suitable temperature, but orbiting that close would mean the planet would likely experience 'tide lock', in which the rotation would be slowed down by tidal action until one side of the planet always faced the star, and one side always away, making a clement environment very iffy.

This argument had more juice back when we still thought that Mercury was tide locked.

If you have the right sort of star, you then you need a planet in the right place. Based on observations of other star systems, it appears that big gas giants have tendency in many cases to go strolling downhil to take up orbit close to the star. If that happens, worlds in the 'Goldilocks Zone' tend to get either thrown into the star or out into interstellar space.

The systems we can see are biased towards large planets/close to sum. We cannot detect the existence of a Sol-type system as yet.

Which now rules out most of the innermost part of the galaxy. The galactic nucleus is a violent, dangerous region with lots of hard radiation. So you're far less likely to find Earth-like worlds there than in our region of the Galaxy.

We would hardly be interested in planets tens of thousand light years away. If Earth isn't alone then there should be terrestial planets much much closer.

Big Possibilities for Small Stars

By Peter Backus

from the piece:

"Most of the stars in our galaxy, and presumably all galaxies, are small red stars called M dwarfs. If you haven’t looked through a telescope, I can guarantee that you’ve never seen an M dwarf star. They are intrinsically very faint. The largest and brightest have about half the mass of the Sun but emit only a few percent as much energy as the Sun. The smallest are more than four thousand times fainter. They are difficult to study and few astronomers devote themselves to the task. Yet, these small stars may turn out to be the most important stars for Astrobiology.

For decades the conventional wisdom on M dwarfs and habitable planets was "forget it." The stars are so cool that in order for a planet to have liquid water, the planet would have to be so close to the star that it would become tidally locked. Just as the Moon is tidally locked to the Earth, the planet would have one side constantly in daylight and the other in perpetual night. It was thought that any atmosphere would freeze out on the night side, leaving the dayside completely exposed to radiation from the star. We cannot imagine life existing under those conditions. So, with few exceptions, M dwarf stars were excluded from SETI target lists.

Then in the mid-90’s people began to question the conventional wisdom. Atmospheric models showed that a tidally locked planet could not only retain its atmosphere, but distribute heat uniformly around the surface with a surprisingly modest amount of carbon dioxide. Other studies showed that ozone, a shield against harmful ultraviolet radiation, could be produced without biology on such a planet, making the surface more accommodating to life. Our conception of habitable conditions also expanded as we discovered "extreme life" (extremophiles) in amazing environments here on Earth. From boiling hot springs and deep ocean volcanic vents to frozen Antarctic lakes to the cooling water of nuclear reactors, life thrives in diverse environments. The environment on planets orbiting M dwarf stars may not be as hostile to life as we thought."

http://www.space.com/searchforlife/s...rs_050728.html

Originally Posted by Peter Gibbons

Originally Posted by Sabinus Invictus

Careful, guys! As Peter Gibbons also well knows, Dr. Gaius Baltar thought the exact same thing, and now #6 owns him - he can't even say 'boo' without Blondie's permission! :wink:

Say "Boo!", Gaius.

Still, there is no question that she owns him now.

Originally Posted by Sabinus Invictus

Still, there is no question that she owns him now.

How long before he leads the Cylons, do you think? That is assuming that they parallel the old show in some way.

Originally Posted by Peter Gibbons

Originally Posted by Sabinus Invictus

Still, there is no question that she owns him now.

How long before he leads the Cylons, do you think? That is assuming that they parallel the old show in some way.

Somehow I don't think it will be for a long time. Rather, I could much more easily see him sharing a bed with whichever #6 does lead the Cylons - as her sex toy. :twisted:

Originally Posted by Milo

Originally Posted by Devil's Advocate

• primordial soup...
  ... tastes better than raw sewage.

After having thought about it, of course. Divorce, gay marriage et al, anything goes (ie., no center of gravity, no directional compass, no God) anyone? 8)

DA is there anything to your life outside of being a right-wing troll?

I mean blue stater makes music. Peter and Kiff read lots of interesting books (not all having to do with electoral politics) and have smart thoughts about them. Eric does his astrology thing. Froggy is clearly very scientific. Arkham has fascinating thoughts about the future. Justin travels to Russia. I enjoy urinating in public. And so on.

But your response to *every* topic is to turn it into some kind of weird partisan referendum. Is there any subject you do not see through the prism of partisan politics? Really. Do you care about nothing else?

Recall, if you will that, that Star Trek episode wherein the people on this planet come across as psychedelic Quakers worshipping some "Landru." Only imagine that Landru is Limbaugh. This is really what is at work. Long ago, an unmistakable correlation was demonstrated between whatever DA posted at any given time and whatever Limbaugh had communicated just moments before via either his radio show or his website. If Limbaugh were talking or writing about the 1947 World Series, DA was writing about it here. So what you really have is a vessel transmitting the "spirit" of Limbaugh to this site at all hours of the day and night, with little or no resistance (more commonly known as an "empty" vessel). On this particular planet (wherever DA lives in whatever Star Trek episode), Limbaugh is "Lord" and the worshipper need only say, "O Flatulent One, Thou art the potter and I am the clay. Mold me." This should be followed by: "OUR Father, who art in Palm Beach, Hallowed be thy Name...." Word is that the Kool-Aid drinker who neglects to leap when Limbaugh says "Frog" is required to go to his room and do twenty "Hail Limbaughs." You get the idea. It is outright blasphemy but the psychedelic Quakers of planet Limbaugh are too caught up in the "spirit" of the Flatulent One to realize it.

You are not of The Body. You will be . . . absorbed. It is the Will of Landru.

Originally Posted by Peter Gibbons

I don’t understand the Lamarck reference because I don’t see how a soft ORP position, the one I hold at least, would necessarily lead to Lamarckism.

Like Gould, I don’t see much of a functional difference between recapitulation (in a soft, very generic form, anyway) and conservation, and furthermore don’t see much of an abstract difference either.

My belief in soft ORP is tied to Wilber’s (really Koestler’s) Holonism and Holarchy. In short, it is the ontological position that everything is a “holon” or a simultaneous whole/part: Made of parts, a whole unto itself, and a part of something else. This idea goes on to contend that the “basic structures” (though likely not the "surface structures") of each holon remain even after being subsumed into a larger holon, whether in a highly organized fashion or not (highly organized: a water molecule or a human body; less organized: a pile of rocks, a simple aggregation of hydrogen, or Marc Lamb’s thinking).

Sean, I've diddled with holons, too, as you know. They're usually fun, and they're often dissappointing. I keep looking for something like Wilber's holarchy, and I keep seeing sneaky motivations creeping in from the side. One of them is "hierarchy." Many of my peers insist on it. But I'm suspicious -- "Stairways to heaven," built by the Strange Attractor.

I have taken a firm position on soft ORP, which invokes a hard rule about it: The way evolution works is always from the bottom up and only through inheritance pathways -- homology -- leaving no effective way for non-homological information to be delivered. Of course, we must also consider the physical limitations of nature that shape biological things into remarkably consistent patterens, but I worry that "convergence," "homoplasy," and other "design"-oriented theories about biological parallelism have a fair dollop of Lamarckism mixed in (and maybe even more than that.) And maybe I need help.

Hello, my name is Croakmore, and I am a neo-Darwinian.

Originally Posted by Croakmore

Originally Posted by Peter Gibbons

I don’t understand the Lamarck reference because I don’t see how a soft ORP position, the one I hold at least, would necessarily lead to Lamarckism.

Like Gould, I don’t see much of a functional difference between recapitulation (in a soft, very generic form, anyway) and conservation, and furthermore don’t see much of an abstract difference either.

My belief in soft ORP is tied to Wilber’s (really Koestler’s) Holonism and Holarchy. In short, it is the ontological position that everything is a “holon” or a simultaneous whole/part: Made of parts, a whole unto itself, and a part of something else. This idea goes on to contend that the “basic structures” (though likely not the "surface structures") of each holon remain even after being subsumed into a larger holon, whether in a highly organized fashion or not (highly organized: a water molecule or a human body; less organized: a pile of rocks, a simple aggregation of hydrogen, or Marc Lamb’s thinking).

Sean, I've diddled with holons, too, as you know. They're usually fun, and they're often dissappointing. I keep looking for something like Wilber's holarchy, and I keep seeing sneaky motivations creeping in from the side. One of them is "hierarchy." Many of my peers insist on it. But I'm suspicious -- "Stairways to heaven," built by the Strange Attractor.

Mr. E, I submit to you that hierarchy is not inherently evil. Indeed, without it, nothing would exist. Humans are made up of bio-materials such as blood. Blood requires hemoglobin to work. Macromolecules like hemoglobin are inherently made up of smaller molecules, which are in turn made up of atoms, in turn consisting of leptons and hadrons. The hardrons are in turn made up of quarks, which are made up of strings or leptoquarks or peanut butter, or something. Everything needs a platform. It coud be that simple.

Originally Posted by Croakmore

I have taken a firm position on soft ORP, which invokes a hard rule about it: The way evolution works is always from the bottom up and only through inheritance pathways -- homology -- leaving no effective way for non-homological information to be delivered. Of course, we must also consider the physical limitations of nature that shape biological things into remarkably consistent patterens, but I worry that "convergence," "homoplasy," and other "design"-oriented theories about biological parallelism have a fair dollop of Lamarckism mixed in (and maybe even more than that.) And maybe I need help.

Hello, my name is Croakmore, and I am a neo-Darwinian.

I am again not sure why Lamarck necessarily needs to come in to soft ORP. I sure don't need him. And any stochasticism-cum-teleonomy-cum-teleology could be mediated by something as mundane as a "force" akin to gravity or quantum color. A mythical sky-god need not apply. IOW, "design" may not be by design. :wink:

Well, bro, I have regarded Lamarckism as nearly anything that evades the principle of homology. The genome moves forward on the backs of selfish genes. It's an informative system that can be reduced to digital code, at least for its structural value. But even then the rest will be digital, too, without even blueprint morphology or any other physicality except codons.

I can't empahsize too much what goes on in meisosis with these digits, and how the alleles get mixed around. In my mind, meiosis is not sensitive to Lamarckian pursuasion. I have to wonder if this digital business of genetics is something more than meets the eye. It's too well designed to be designed, wouldn't you say?

--Croak

Originally Posted by Croakmore

Well, bro, I have regarded Lamarckism as nearly anything that evades the principle of homology.

Please elaborate.

Originally Posted by Croakmore

The genome moves forward on the backs of selfish genes. It's an informative system that can be reduced to digital code, at least for its structural value. But even then the rest will be digital, too, without even blueprint morphology or any other physicality except codons.

If I understand you correctly, my response would be that the morphology is a combination of what's coded in the genes (and epigenes?) and how that interacts with the environment during ontogeny.

Originally Posted by Croakmore

I can't empahsize too much what goes on in meisosis with these digits, and how the alleles get mixed around. In my mind, meiosis is not sensitive to Lamarckian pursuasion. I have to wonder if this digital business of genetics is something more than meets the eye. It's too well designed to be designed, wouldn't you say?

I must misunderstand you, because it seems to me almost like you are arguing for some level of Lamarckianism, and I know you're not.

I am very open to selection pressures and bottlenecks acting on gene pools to be enough for evolution to occur, though I am also open to the possibility that there something else also at work to some degree and/or that the dice of chance are loaded.

OK, I do see heterochrony (reproductive quirks occurring along ontological sequences) as a possible way to achieve evolutionary benefits. But it's a rare Darwinian gambit, if it works at all. And remember one thing: those benefits must aways be coded well enough, and durably enough, to survive inheritance (homology) and become fixed in the revised genome. Any new zygote must rely exclusively on what it gets from fertilization. Nothing else jumps across, sneaks under, climbs over, or whizzes through sexual processes that sustain a species over time. Even if the Creator messes around with larvae in a clandestine manner, like priests messing around with choir boys, the results must be encoded for genomic time travel.

For the evolutionary dice to be loaded, there would need to be a top-down influence, wouldn't there? I'm not ready for that. But there is one curious means promoted by Joseph A. Shapiro (U. of Chicago) that might work as an intermediary solution: cellular regulation of "transposable elements," which account for genetic or epigentic changes in the homological genome. This is an extension of a role played Barbara McClintock's "transposons," where the genes themselves are sort of fiddled with by cellular processes to obtain evolutionary benefits. If this can be convincingly demonstrated (and Shapiro believes it has) then here's a way to undermine the autocracy of pure homology. I can see how Lamarck might get a boost from this.

I think the gate to evolutionary heaven swings on the hinges of homology and not by the forces of strange attraction. But not even Gould brought back the jury for a firm decision on this. So I will admit to you that the theoretical waters are still muddy enough for strange things to happen below the surface of observation.

--Croak

That first sentence made my brain hurt froggy.

Dear Richard,

Originally Posted by Croakmore

> [On question 1: Splitting evolutionary process into two parts -
> simple life from primordial soup, and more complex life form
> evolution.]

> Kauffman is not an evolutionary biologist, and his POV is what I
> would call "romantic." If it were true we'd be pumping out all
> sorts of critters in our evolutionary laboratories. I'm still
> waiting for the first such critter.

Since we're talking about a process that takes millions of years, I'll
be long gone before you see the first critter, but you might see it
if you achieve immortality after the Singularity.

Actually you didn't answer my question - whether the issues are the
same for both of the above parts.

Originally Posted by Croakmore

> [On question 2 - Strange attractor]

> No, I don't agree. That is a top-down model for a bottom-up
> process. And evolution is not "the chaos of random mutations."
> Here are the fundamental causes evolution:

> 1. Reduction in population size leading to random genetic drift.
> Here the rarer alleles have a chance to make an evolutionary
> difference. No selection involved.

> 2. Gene flow. This means genes jumping across chormosomal
> boundaries, even from one species to another, causing creative
> mixing and allelic production that usually is fatal, but not
> always. "Lateral DNA transfer" is now regarded as a primary
> mechanism. No selection involved.

> 3. Mutation. Linear mistakes (i.e., nuclide shuffling) in the
> replication of germ cells (i.e., gamete production during meiosis)
> that gets passed on by heredity. Despite popular opinion, this not
> a very potent means of evolution. No selection involved.

> 4. Non-random mating. This will disturb the Hardy-Weinberg
> equilibrium, possibly leading to an effective redistribution of
> alleles. And this also is regarded as non-selective (although it
> does seem selective, prima facia.)

> 5. Natural selection. This is caused by differential success in
> reporduction of individuals, where the strongest, cutist,
> smelliest (you name it) prevail. And this, of course, is
> selective.

> It is best to dispense with the rigid meme of "evolution through
> the chaos of random mutations."

Fine. Change it to "evolution through the chaos of random genetic
shift, gene flow, mutation, non-random mating and natural selection."
Everything else stays the same, and there's still a need to identify
some sort of strange attractor - either creation or survival of the
fittest.

Originally Posted by Croakmore

> [On question 3 - flipping coin, getting 1000 heads]

> I don't know.

Here you're clearly just copping out. Before the coin was flipped
once, you'd think, "I wonder if it will be heads or tails?"

After the first flip, you'd think, "OK, heads. I wonder if it will
be heads or tails for the second flip?"

After 5 heads in a row, you'd think, "Wow! That's an amazing run of
heads. We should start seeing some tails soon."

After 10-15 heads in a row, you'd be thinking, "This doesn't make
sense. Something's going on here."

After 200 heads in a row, you would no longer be wondering whether
the next flip would be heads or tails: You would be sure it was going
to be heads. You would have formed some conclusion or at least some
hypotheses about what was going on: the coin was unfair or the
flipper was cheating.

So that's why I say that a simple answer like "I don't know" is a
copout.

Originally Posted by Croakmore

> [Question 4, on evolution by accident, without a strange
> attractor]

> The honest answer is: I don't know. The best argument I have found
> is A. G. Cairns-Smith's "genetic take over." That is, at some
> mysterious point there was a "hijacking" of abiotic chemical
> processes by some prebiotic genetic configuration that was able to
> self-replicate. Call it a "strange attractor" if you like, but it
> is so poorly understood as to be almost useless in a rigorous
> model.

Well, here you seem to be answering question 1, at least by
implication. Your answer specifically targets the "primordial soup"
portion of evolution, and so I'm inferring that you accept evolution
of simple to complex life forms.

What I don't understand is how you differentiate the two, or even why
you feel it's important to do so.

Nor do I see why the "hijacking" evolution is much more complex or
hard to believe than the evolution of the giraffe. If I understand
your reasoning from this and previous messages, you should be very
puzzled about why we don't find many intermediate species with
necks of varying lengths. The answer is that the shorter-necked
giraffes couldn't survive with the longer-necked giraffes around. In
the same way, other forms of life couldn't survive when rna-based
life appeared on the scene.

You're certainly right that the "hijacking" model is poorly
understood. I don't object to your saying that, only to what you
conclude from it.

Your reasoning leaves you with a serious epistemological problem.
What you'd like to say is that the development of life is clearly
impossible, and that therefore it couldn't happen twice. Your
problem is that it's happened once, and that it's much more reasonable
to believe that if it happened once then it happened again. That's
the crux of what I see as the contradiction in your reasoning.

Originally Posted by Croakmore

> God just won't go away quietly. He owns the copyright on Biblical
> memes that are there perhaps to confuse us. I think He or She or
> It is soon the shed those emporer's frocks. Maybe the Singularity
> will help with. But at this point, I'm not sure if my analytic
> crapshoot is any better than yours.

Now look here. You "don't know" anything about the coin flip
question, and you "don't know" anything about the strange attractor
question, but somehow you know that God just won't go away quietly.
How could you possibly "know" that? That "knowledge" is built on a
huge mountain of religious assumptions. You reject "strange
attractors" because there's no rigorous model, but you don't have any
rigorous model for the things you do blithely claim to know.

I think it's worth pointing out again that religion is entirely moot
to this discussion, the subject of which is whether there's other
intelligent life in the universe. Evolution is entirely consistent
with the Bible by using evolution as the mechanism of creation.

Maybe the "hijacking" mechanism required intervention by God. It
makes no difference whether that's the mechanism or there's some
other mechanism. Whatever it is, the most reasonable assumption is
that it's happened elsewhere as well, and if it's happened in one
other place, then it's reasonable to assume it's happened in many
other places.

I think we're at a total impasse, Richard. It's a hung jury.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
john@GenerationalDynamics.com
http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Dear Richard,

Originally Posted by Croakmore

> I think the gate to evolutionary heaven swings on the hinges of
> homology and not by the forces of strange attraction

I'm personally indifferent to the details of the nature of the road to
this heaven, but I do wish to point out the following:

Originally Posted by Merriam-Webster's Medical Dictionary

> 1 a : likeness in structure between parts of different organisms
> due to evolutionary differentiation from the same or a
> corresponding part of a remote ancestor —compare ANALOGY,
> HOMOMORPHY b : correspondence in structure between different parts
> of the same individual

> 2 a : the relation existing between chemical compounds in a series
> whose successive members have in composition a regular difference
> especially of one carbon and two hydrogen atoms CH2 b : the
> relation existing among elements in the same group of the periodic
> table c : similarity of nucleotide or amino acid sequence (as in
> nucleic acids or proteins)

> http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=homology

It looks to me like these two definitions correspond to the parts of
the evolutionary process that I asked about in question 1.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
john@GenerationalDynamics.com
http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

Dear Richard . . . Actually you didn't answer my question . . .

Must be frustrating.

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

I think we're at a total impasse, Richard. It's a hung jury.

I happen to agree more with you on this particular topic than I do with Mr. E, but I am amazed at your narrow-mindedness and arrogance nevertheless. How can you legitimately tackle him on this without being at least partially familiar with Dawkins and Gould?

I will ask you a second time: Would you even consider reading Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker as Mr. E. suggests?? Or would you rather just pontificate with 100% certainty?

At http://www.accelerando.org you can download a novel about the Singularity.

John & Sean,

Been off sailing for a few days, and so I'm late in responding.

First, John, on this business of randomness, which you seem to emphasize, consider what Joseph Shapiro says in his article Transpoabel elements as the key to a 21st century view of evolution.

Transposable elements, non-random genomic changes, and signal transduction: Being able to trigger genetic changes in response to stress and other biological inputs in itself presents an important departure from temporal randomness in evolution.

On most of your other issues, I'm not quite sure how to respond. What seems to me to be most important thing is to understand how evolutionary mainliners attempt to explain it, and maybe why Gould and Dawkins agree on this and disagree on that.

One more thing on the origin of life: I can't ingore this singularity, as it were, in the fundamental structure of life. There is only one form of it; and that may be the most incredibly important biological fact of all. I'll have to say, after thinking it all over while drifting around near Port Townsend, that life on Earth (as we know it) may be an alien infection. This kind of origination would explain such a remarkable uniformity of life (allowing, of course, for its own remarkable diversity). Furthermore, you could start from this premise to argue for the ubiquity of life in the universe. But you would still be entirely without an explanation for the original origination. Not until I understand that will I be able to leap to grander assumptions about universal intelligence. On that one, I think the absence of evidence gathered by the SETI project speaks loudly in favor of a largely ignorant universe.

Sean, as I posted in The Next Pandemic thread, Shapiro has got me a bit rattled. Some of the neo-Darwinians I know have rejected him, but not so convincingly, it seems to me, because some of the neo-Darwinians I know are in lockdown. I don't know how they can ignore this bold statement by Shapiro:

If an organism can turn on biochemical systems for genome reorganization when they are most needed, it has gained an important edge in the struggle for survival in a constantly changing biosphere.

I wish Gould were around to take him on.

--Croak

Originally Posted by Croakmore

Hey, bro, just curious: Do you have in your library a copy of Gould's "Ontogeny and Phylogeny"? You seem awfully astute on this ORP stuff.

What is ORP? What comes to mind is "oxidation-reduction potential" as in an ORP probe, but I don't think that is what you are referring to.

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

Originally Posted by Croakmore

Hey, bro, just curious: Do you have in your library a copy of Gould's "Ontogeny and Phylogeny"? You seem awfully astute on this ORP stuff.

What is ORP? What comes to mind is "oxidation-reduction potential" as in an ORP probe, but I don't think that is what you are referring to.

biogenetic law, Haeckel's Wittenberg to Darwin's Rome

Originally Posted by Virgil K. Saari

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

Originally Posted by Croakmore

Hey, bro, just curious: Do you have in your library a copy of Gould's "Ontogeny and Phylogeny"? You seem awfully astute on this ORP stuff.

What is ORP? What comes to mind is "oxidation-reduction potential" as in an ORP probe, but I don't think that is what you are referring to.

biogenetic law, Haeckel's Wittenberg to Darwin's Rome

Haeckel's "hard" ORP has been completely repudiated. "Softer" versions are still on the table, and to my mind unavoidable.

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

Originally Posted by Croakmore

Hey, bro, just curious: Do you have in your library a copy of Gould's "Ontogeny and Phylogeny"? You seem awfully astute on this ORP stuff.

What is ORP? What comes to mind is "oxidation-reduction potential" as in an ORP probe, but I don't think that is what you are referring to.

Mike, I've always looked at "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" (ORP) as the biological equivalent to the yoga principle of "as above, so below." This asserts that the form/function of the greater world (the sky, the universe, etc.) is recapitulated in or by its lesser members (planets, humans, cultures, etc.). You could say the seasons of the year are recapitulated in a human life, and maybe even in its culture (T4T theory certainly does). In the case of ORP, the hard version (Haeckel's) asserts, for example, that the development of a human being (or its ontogeny) copies the form/function of the evolution of its phylum (or its phylogeny). Softer versions of ORP hold that certain developmental features of an individual may indeed reflect comparable features of "lower" forms of life in its phylum (compare the "gills" of human embryos to those of fish, for example), but these features can be explained by means other than Haeckel's. S. J. Gould (an ORP affectionado) argued that soft ORP is the result of occasional reproduction by immature organisms, in some cases even larvae, which screws up the developmental (ontological) timing to the extent that recapitulation appears to be an active force, which it is not, but yet some kind of evolutionary communication seems to be involved. (Personally, I don't think it is very important, but Sean can make it seem that way.)

The ORP meme is like Douglas MacArthur's "Old soldiers never die, they just fade away."

Hope this helps.

--Croak

Originally Posted by Croakmore

Mike, I've always looked at "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" (ORP) as the biological equivalent to the yoga principle of "as above, so below." This asserts that the form/function of the greater world (the sky, the universe, etc.) is recapitulated in or by its lesser members (planets, humans, cultures, etc.).

Some may see it that way, but I don't. There doesn't have to be anything metaphysical or mystical about it, though I do not categorically deny those aspects either, I just don't emphasis them or rely on them (like Meece might).

To me, soft ORP is unavoidable. The basic structures of phylogeny must manifest in ontogeny. We phylogenetically started off as one-celled creatures, and we ontogenetically start off as a fertilzed egg. We moved on to cell colonies, as we move on to a blastula, etc . . . .

Is the comparison exact? No, only in basic structures. Does it follow functionally as it does basic form? Often not. We don't use our temporary embryonic gills to sift oxygen from amniotic fluid, for example. Can the order of things sometimes get out of whack, as with neotony? Certainly, but the most basic of structures cannot be violated.

Originally Posted by Croakmore

You could say the seasons of the year are recapitulated in a human life, and maybe even in its culture (T4T theory certainly does).

I think "recapitulate" is inaccurate here. That terms means "summarize" but implies "repeating". I think we are dealing with more of an "analogy" in that they both imitate an arc. I think the saecular and climatological seasons are analogous to each other due to their sinusoidal natures.

Originally Posted by Croakmore

In the case of ORP, the hard version (Haeckel's) asserts, for example, that the development of a human being (or its ontogeny) copies the form/function of the evolution of its phylum (or its phylogeny). Softer versions of ORP hold that certain developmental features of an individual may indeed reflect comparable features of "lower" forms of life in its phylum (compare the "gills" of human embryos to those of fish, for example), but these features can be explained by means other than Haeckel's. S. J. Gould (an ORP affectionado) argued that soft ORP is the result of occasional reproduction by immature organisms, in some cases even larvae, which screws up the developmental (ontological) timing to the extent that recapitulation appears to be an active force, which it is not, but yet some kind of evolutionary communication seems to be involved. (Personally, I don't think it is very important, but Sean can make it seem that way.)

But Gould seems to ignore the basic structure aspect, but I could be wrong.